Evolution of Project


Our project, during its initial creation, was meant to be a VR performance. This portion has stayed consistent throughout development, however early designs varied wildly.

The first idea we had was a maze game built in liminal spaces, with one-way walls, items that could pass through terrain or otherwise defy laws of physics, all coming together requiring the players to cooperate and solve puzzles to progress through the labyrinth. The main performance element of this iteration was how the players would paint the walls and ground as they explored the maze, and at the end, a timelapse from a birds-eye-view would be created, showing how the players painted the maze, and allowing a form of artistic expression this way.

The next iteration was significantly more story-driven, being about a group of players waking up and exploring a more naturalistic world, where they would gather items and learn about their circumstances, and eventually discover that some 4th-dimensional entity had trapped them there to study them. The players would then use their knowledge of the map to outsmart and escape the entity. This iteration started a long-running concept of the world changing based on how many players are in an area, revealing interactables when the right number of people are present, as well as music playing based on how many players are nearby, to better understand how the changing world mechanic works,

Another iteration of the project integrated performance through fashion and expression, primarily. Players are given a collection of parts they can attach to their avatars and can mix and match these parts to get whatever aesthetic they prefer while exploring a world that has environmental storytelling for if the players want to understand what's going on. The new core mechanic is the modification, which, alongside the cosmetic parts, includes utilitarian attachments, such as lights to navigate dark caves. The world changing around the players is no longer a core mechanic, although the music while players are near each other has stayed, both for performance elements, but also so players can communicate, as standard voice communication is disabled in this iteration. The story now is primarily one of cycles, with the players waking up and exploring a world filled with their own kind, and eventually learning that meteors wiped the robots out. This iteration will hopefully be the final one.

The final iteration of the project is primarily a walking simulator, dropping players into an open and explorable environment full of implicative storytelling which raises questions for the players to think on. It shows paintings made by robots that already existed in the setting, which tell stories of love, kinship, or maybe are just some puppet's way of hanging a 'live, laugh, love' sign in its room, which, alongside vivid and lively nature, paint a living world which once might have held a distinct culture, which the players are able to explore and ponder for as long or as little as they like, all while they enjoy making music with one another, communicating and creating new bonds and dynamics.

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